Incident at Shimabashi
by Nezuko
Summary: A poisoning, a prophecy, a chuunin clusterfuck gone wrong, and hell's version of a killer cold--all without a friend by your side. What's an ANBU to do? Genma oneshot


**Incident at Shimabashi  
**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on the manga "_Naruto"_ by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei.  
_

It was a fluke that Genma was still in Akatani that morning. His mission had taken longer than expected, as his target had failed to appear for three whole days. Genma had lain in wait, crouched immobile, concealed by ornate architecture and shadowy genjutsu, on the tiled roof of a small outbuilding on the estate, for every one of those days. It was an excellent spot, hidden behind a fire-protection dolphin decorating the tiled rooftop, so close that he could hear the business of the household. The mistress scolding a servant for damaging the brocade on a heavy winter kimono. Cleaning girls gossiping about some local Lothario that one of the kitchen staff had been seen entertaining. Cooks preparing freshly-caught fish for the nightly meal. That had been especially trying, smelling mouthwatering odors of what was clearly daily fare for this household, while Genma had had to content himself with a sticky-dry ration bar and a few swallows of water from his canteen.

If he'd had his choice in this, he would have simply infiltrated the house in dark of night, slit the man's throat in his sleep, and left the body to stain the silken bed sheets scarlet. But Genma didn't have his choice. The target, Kitahara Yasuhiko, was a wealthy man, obviously an influential landowner or merchant of some sort. And the details of Genma's mission assignment had been very clear on the method he was to use. Kitahara was to be killed with a poison-tipped dart, on the balcony on which he took his breakfast every day, rain or shine. If he could not be killed at his breakfast, then it was to be during his after-dinner drink, also taken on that balcony. The death was evidently to be a message to parties unknown.

It wasn't important to the mission that Genma know who this man really was, or why his death, this very specifically orchestrated death, was important enough for Konoha to accept the mission and assign it to ANBU. He was there to do the job given to him by the Hokage, exactly as specified. The Intel briefing had been explicit. Unless he was detected, he was not to abort. The death _must_ occur on that balcony, using the weapon provided to him. The hammer does not chose which nail to hit.

The weapon they'd given to him to carry out this assassination with was almost as much a kunai as a dart. A heavy faceted rod that tapered to a cruel point. At its back end there were decorative scrolls of raised gilded metal winding around the handle, forming fins to help it fly straight. They were clearly lettering of some sort, but not a script Genma had ever seen before. Nothing he could read. It had been supplied by the client, delivered to Genma by the Intel agent who'd briefed him seven days ago. Only the poison was of his own choosing--a quick-acting paralytic agent that would freeze the target's breath in his lungs and drop him helpless to cry out to his balcony floor.

If only the bastard would show up.

In the three days Genma had lain in wait, he'd grown to hate his unseen target. He was hungry and tired, cramped and sore, rained upon, chilled, bored nearly to tears, and starting to come down with a cold, and it was all the target's fault. How could he simply fail to take his breakfast _and_ his evening drinks for three days in a row? But careful checking told Genma it was simple ill luck that kept him from completing his mission. The target remained, as far as Genma could tell, completely unaware of the threat to his life.

The first day, he had idled in the bed of his concubine and breakfasted there, then had a meeting in the evening that kept him from his usual post-dinner routine. The second day the target had failed to appear for breakfast because he was suffering from a headache, and he'd skipped his after-dinner drink on the advice of his physician, staying away from the balcony so as to avoid catching a chill from the damp night air. The third day was another morning of sexual pleasure for the target, ensconced in the arms of yet another concubine. It was another morning for Genma of aching joints, rumbling belly and frustration. That evening he'd lain in futile wait again, only to have his aims thwarted when the target was called away to dine at the home of a friend. Kitahara arrived home late, drunk, and went straight to bed. Genma curled up on his tiles and swore bitter oaths about the stupid target, his stupid mission, stupid colds, the stupid rain, and his whole stupid life.

By sunrise on the fourth day, the cold was in full bloom. Genma sniffled and spat, barely choked his meal bar down a terribly sore throat, rubbed red-rimmed eyes, and decided he'd stage the damn death if he had to, but he was not waiting another day. Fortunately for him, on the fourth day Kitahara finally appeared at breakfast on his balcony.

He was a fat man, balding, with what had obviously been a handsome face in his youth, now ravaged by years of dissolute living. A well-dressed man, in a gold brocade robe heavy enough to keep off the chill. He sat down to his breakfast--soup, smoked fish, pickled vegetables, rice, and poached egg--looked out over his gardens as the sun peered through dissipating clouds, smiled at and dismissed his servant, and declared it to be a lucky day. Five minutes later he was dead, with the ornate foreign dagger through his throat. Genma was so hungry he was tempted to steal from the dead man's breakfast. But the mission was complete, the man was dead, and the risk of being seen far to great to consider climbing up to that balcony for a slab of smoked sea bream.

The village of Akatani was nestled within the red-bluffed walls of the valley for which it was named. And the steady drizzle of the prior three days was finally gone, replaced by a weak and watery late-winter sunshine. It glinted off rust-tinted puddles, which reflected grey sky and the arching sprays of flowering plum that lined the roads and paths. Akatani was famous for its plums in summer, its blossoms at the end of winter. As Genma splashed along the rutted road, concealed in a brown rain cape and a simple henge to hide his uniform and weapons, he tried to enjoy the scenery, but all he could really think about was how much he wanted to be warm, dry, and in bed. He sneezed, hunched his shoulders, sniffled and coughed, and continued grimly on. Some missions just sucked. Obviously this was one of them.

He turned a corner and found himself in the village proper. Cooking smells from morning fires were everywhere, and a tea house on his right was serving breakfast to several customers. He was late enough at this point that he decided another half hour could hardly matter, and was about to go through the restaurant's gates when a whispery voice called out to him.

"You. The troubled young man with death on his hands, come here, boy."

Genma froze for a moment, then started on. Guilty conscience, maybe, making him think the voice was directed at him. Or the fact that there were few others on the street.

"I mean you, son. Come talk to an old woman who has something important to tell you," the voice continued. A hand beckoned from the doorway of a small candle shop.

He stopped again, turned, and looked in the door. A toothless old woman was just inside, with her thin white hair done up as elegantly as a geisha's, and robes as rich as any a princess might wear, but ancient and faded and threadbare. Her eyes were milky and white with cataracts, as opaque as a Hyuuga's. Genma didn't say anything, simply looked down at her, waiting.

"You are troubled," the woman said again. "Poor orphan. You've lost everyone, haven't you? You've lost so much."

It did nothing for Genma's mood. "What do you want, grandmother?" he asked tersely. His hands under his cloak reached for weapons.

"Come, child. Anzu-baachan won't hurt you. Sit down and take tea with her, and she'll tell you what you need to know, yes?"

The old woman sounded senile. She moved without grace or stealth. Her chakra was as weak as any civilian's. Harmless, Genma decided. He ducked into the shop's doorway and scanned a room cluttered with bundles of candles and wicks, and thick with the smell of paraffin. No one was inside but the old woman. No lingering stain of chakra from a genjutsu. No hidden enemies in the shadows. "I'm busy, grandmother. What do you want? A coin?"

"No no, only a moment of time. Sit with me, like a good child. I know you. I see into your heart. You are full of longing."

Genma didn't sit. He stayed where he was, leaning against the door frame, dug out a few ryou and pressed them into the woman's hand. "I'm just hungry and tired and ready to be on my way. Here, buy yourself some breakfast," he said, and started to turn away. The old woman reached for his arm, caught the edge of his cloak.

"Wait, shinobi-san."

Genma froze, fingers twitching as he palmed a blade into his left hand.

"I know what you are. You are like my son. He was a ninja, long ago. He died, also long ago," the old woman said. "I will not hurt you. But you must hear me. You are a killer, but you will give life to one who would have died."

Genma shuddered, muscles cord-tight, weapon concealed and poised. How had she known he was a ninja? He stared at her, seeing nothing but soft skin falling in pale wrinkles, that toothless mouth, those sightless eyes. There was _nothing_ there. She was just an old woman in a faded dress.

"You are sick," the old woman continued.

Genma nearly laughed, tense as he was. "No trick to figure _that_ out." He sniffled and coughed again, and wiped his nose against the back of one gloved hand.

"Your hands," the woman said. "Your heart. You are sick in the bones of your hands, and your heart aches. You fear you are alone in the world. You see the deaths of those you love and remember only bitterness. But you have already met your soulmate. Your true love waits for you at journey's end."

"That's enough," Genma snapped. He jerked away from the old woman, backing up into the doorway. Senbon bristled between his fingers.

"You are frightened, child. But your mother loved you when you were as toothless as I am now, and your soul though stained is still as pure as it was made."

"Crazy," Genma growled. "You're crazy. Don't follow me and I won't kill you." He stumbled out of the candle shop, away from the old woman and her insane babble. Too risky to leave her alive, maybe. But there was no clear reason to kill her. She'd guessed he was a ninja, but beyond that? She knew nothing, could tell an enemy nothing. The time he'd lose in killing her and concealing her body was certainly more than he could afford. And it would be hard to explain on a mission report, the death of an elderly civilian for what? Being spooky?

His throat hurt, his head ached. He fled from the candle shop, a shadow whispering through the awakening village. Sick in the hands? Sick? It was the old woman who was sick. Babbling on like some old tea-leaf reader about true loves and soulmates. Was it a lucky guess about his aching hands? Had she felt something when he pressed the coins into her palms? And calling him a killer, shinobi. A guess. A hunch based on the way he moved, or his scent. He'd given nothing away. He'd barely spoken to her. How had she known?

He didn't stop for breakfast. Too risky now. Even though the sun was shining brightly, he was chilled and shaking. Sick. The witch had got that much right. He thumbed a pair of aspirin from a metal tube into his mouth, swallowed the acid things dry, stiffened his shoulders, and hurried away from cursed Akatani, with it's tardy targets and eerie old women.

By the time the sun's rays were slanting long and orange along the ground, the kilometers he'd put between himself and Akatani had helped to lessen his dread about the old woman. A beggar looking for a few coins, doing parlor tricks with lucky guesses, he told himself. And his own fevered brain playing tricks on him had made her threat seem bigger than it was.

The road forked. The village of Shimabashi lay a few kilometers to the east. Konoha many, many more to the north. Genma slumped against a tree trunk, blew his raw nose, coughed until he choked, and sighed a deeply unhappy sigh. He was less than halfway home, wheezing, aching, fevered, and exhausted. Thinking about the long run through the night ahead of him made his stomach turn. It wasn't worth it. Three days of sleeping on the dead man's roof in the February rain had given him this cold. Another night spent in the open could only make it worse. If he stayed one night at an inn, with a hot bath and a hot meal, he'd be doing what Raidou always insisted he do, and treating the medic first. Any competent medic, he told himself, would have sent him to bed hours ago.

He gazed wearily down the east-turning fork of the road. Shimabashi was famous for the bridge that connected an island in the middle of the Tiger River with both banks. A graceful double arching bridge, lit with lanterns that reflected gaily on the water at night. The island itself was a bustling pleasure quarter, full of tea houses and restaurants, brothels and theatres. Genma could easily get a room for the night there, a hot bath and a good meal, and never be noticed. Turning to the east, his only thought was how grateful he was that the way was mostly downhill

Getting a room in a small inn was, as he'd hoped, easy. Shimabashi was a trading hub, a port for goods coming upriver from the ocean, many kilometers distant, and for produce flowing back down from inland farms. It was a bustling city, full of strangers passing through for a night or two. A perfect place to remain anonymous, with no questions asked. He was shown to his room by a motherly hostess, who offered to get him a doctor for his terrible cold. Genma declined, though he did allow her to get his futon ready and send him up some medicinal tea.

He dropped his henge with a weary sigh the moment she'd departed. His grand plans for a bath and a hot meal felt suddenly like too much work as he sat on the floor removing leg bindings, armour and weapons. And the futon looked terribly inviting. He decided he'd just lie down for a moment, just long enough to let his headache ease, and then he'd go down and see about that bath...

It was long after sunrise before he woke, face down on the futon with quilts roped messily around his hips, and his bare lower legs sprawled across the tatami. The herbal tea stood untouched in its now-cold iron pot.

Genma's exhausted sleep had been dreamless. Restorative. Rolling to his side, he sat up, stretching and yawning and rubbing his face. He found his four days of neglecting to shave manifesting in the beginnings of a scraggly beard. The cold had settled lower now, and he coughed deeply, but at least his head was clear, he could breathe through his nose, and his fever had broken. With that overdue bath and meal, he'd be fine for the journey the rest of the way home.

By the time he paid for his night at the inn and made his way out to find a restaurant, it was already lunchtime and the eateries were crowded. He took the innkeeper's advice and chose a large family-style place, ordering a hearty stew of local fish and root vegetables. He wore a henge again, to hide his ANBU uniform--an itinerant monk on a pilgrimage in plain black and white robes. His sword was disguised as a priest's staff, his mask as a wide-brimmed hat hanging loosely down his back.

The other diners paid him no attention at all, allowing Genma to thoroughly scrutinize them. Sitting near him there was a family with a girl maybe seven years old, celebrating her birthday, and a table with three well-dressed older men discussing some sort of business deal involving the trade of ceramic bowls for bolts of silk. A little farther away there were more groups of business diners, a few pairs of older women, obviously friends, enjoying a luncheon together. One or two lone diners like himself were scattered here and there amongst the chattering crowd, probably travelers. In a shady corner, a couple gazed deeply into one another's eyes, and played footsie under the table. And a few more families with children. It seemed like a prosperous place, and the stew, when they brought it, was rich and tasty, with plenty of meat.

Genma was about halfway through his bowl when he caught a whiff of something like black powder. He was instantly on alert, scanning the crowd in time to see a shimmer, feel the hint of a disturbance that told him someone was using a genjutsu. He brought his hands up in the Ram seal and muttered _kai!_ under his breath, channeling chakra to break whatever illusion might have been cast, and was rewarded with the sight of two ninja in Konoha chuunin uniform slipping out the door.

There was an explosion before he had time to decipher what their presence might mean. It came from the back of the restaurant, where the kitchen and offices were tucked away. The patrons screamed, some froze in place, others pushed away from their tables, tipping over chairs and scrabbling over one another in a rush for the exit. Fire bloomed from the open kitchen doorway, and smoke flowed into the room, heavy and black with cooking grease. Genma looked up to see the little birthday girl staring back at him. Her parents were already on their feet, reaching for her.

The second explosion was a thousand times more powerful. Genma felt the rumble without really knowing it, reacting before he had time to realize why he was moving. He threw himself forward, on top of the little girl, shielding her with his body as he rolled towards the wall. The building collapsed in on itself. Flames roared skyward as heavy chunks of masonry wall and tiled roof cascaded down. A heavy blow landed on his back, knocking him flat. Knocking him out. His henge evaporated with his consciousness, revealing an unmasked ANBU, but there was no one to see. The smoke and dust were densely opaque. The collapsed ruin of the building obscured what the smoke didn't.

He didn't lie senseless for long. Too much adrenaline coursing through his veins saw to that. Genma choked on the smoke, groaning awake. As he came to, he felt the small, still form of the child under him.

_Out. Get out._ That was the only imperative. It was black as pitch, and the air was thick, making Genma cough. There was weight on his back, and pain, but he wasn't trapped. He could feel and move every limb, he was relieved to find. The child, though... He checked her pulse, found it strong at her neck. When he shifted up onto hands and knees over her, she moaned and whimpered for her mother.

"Shhh. It's okay. Just be still and I'll get us out of here," he told her, and pulled her close to his armoured chest. Her parents were probably dead. The groans and cries of the injured and dying filtered through the sounds of a fire raging and debris still settling, and the heat of the fire radiated through the berm of rubble they were buried beneath.

Genma cradled the child and cast a translocation jutsu. He had been near an outside wall when the explosion came. It couldn't be more than a few meters to safety. It was a risk, translocating blindly, but it was better than roasting to death in that inferno. He and the child rematerialized in a dust and smoke choked street, filled with the cries of alarmed civilians. Genma stumbled to his feet, gasping for fresher air, and stared numbly down at the child in his arms. She stared back at him, terrified and pale, with sooty cheeks smeared with blood.

"It's alright," he told her again. Empty words, in the low, soothing tones used by all medics, all rescuers. A bright drop of scarlet fell on the girl's cheek, and she flinched, reaching a shaking hand up towards Genma's unmasked face. Genma's own hand followed it, finding a steady flow dripping from a cut on his scalp. "Don't worry," he told her, dropping his hand again. "It's alright."

Chaos filled the street as people ran towards the blazing building with water, ran away from it bearing burned and wailing victims. Someone looked up, saw Genma's uniform, and screamed. Genma didn't wait to be recognized a second time. Didn't know whether that had been a cry for help, or one of fear. Surely they could tell from looking at him, holding an injured child, injured himself, that he hadn't set off that explosion. But civilians were easily spooked by the sight of an ANBU uniform. He spun away, shielding his face and the girl, ducking into a dusty little shop. Another candle shop.

This one was inhabited not by a toothless old woman, but a young couple, the candle maker and his wife. They looked up at Genma, horrified.

"Shinobi-san! Are you alright? You're hurt! We heard the noise. What happened?"

"Gas main," Genma said thickly, coughing. It was probably true. What else could have set off such a huge explosion? A second explosion. The first one, that had been the work of ninja, but the blast that killed this girl's family, that had terrified the people of Shimabashi, that was too big to be the work of chuunin, and those had definitely been chuunin. If mass casualties had been the desired outcome, it would have been ANBU doing the job.

This... Genma stared down at wide, frightened eyes, at his own blood spattered over the girl's face. This was incompetence. He was furious.

"I'm a medic," he said as evenly as possible, looking back up at the adults in the room. "Let me put her down on a table or something, and check her for injuries."

The man nodded to his wife, who darted one more frightened glance at Genma, and ran through a door at the back of the shop. Before Genma could register his dismay at being refused their aid, she returned with several cushions which she spread over a workbench. Her hands were trembling, he noticed, as gave the child to her care. The girl only whimpered a little and turned her wide, shocked eyes away from the blood-smeared face of her rescuer.

Genma's quick hands darted over the child, feeling for fractures, for bones out of place, for bleeding deep inside that could kill just as surely as any more obvious wound. It was a miracle, he thought when he found none, that she wasn't injured. Bruised, yes, and terrified. Probably orphaned, and undoubtedly scarred to her soul by her memories, but her body was unbroken.

A miracle.

"Take care of her. You'll take care of her?" he asked gruffly.

"Of course, shinobi-san." The taint of fear still hadn't left the candle maker's voice. "But you..."

He didn't wait to hear what else the man had to say.

His second translocation was cleaner, swifter, without the burden of the child to bear, or any fear he might materialize himself into a wall. He cloaked himself in the simplest of genjutsu as he ran back towards the fire--a simple notice-me-not technique that let the eyes of any not specifically looking for him slide right past. It worked flawlessly, allowing him to dart through the chaos unseen.

His attention turned to following a trail not nearly gone cold yet. He found the chuunin perpetrators of this disaster taking shelter in a small shrine not far from the famous bridge of Shimabashi. Their chakra was wildly alight with alarm, not masked. There was a scent of blood and charred flesh, and signs of disturbance in the dead leaves littering the path to the shrine.

Genma slipped inside, a whisper of shadow in the darkness, to find three Konoha chuunin huddled under the benevolent gaze of a seated Buddha. One, a woman with short black hair, appeared unharmed. The other two were the men Genma had seen at the restaurant. One of them, groaning with pain, was grievously burned. His companion was bandaged already, clearly having escaped the explosion with much lighter wounds.

The rage under Genma's breastbone blossomed into full strength. He stepped out of the shadows with a sneer on his face. "Don't move. Don't draw your weapons. Do not fight me. Be grateful it's not an enemy who found you here."

The uninjured woman and her bandaged companion both had blades in their hands. They looked at Genma, at his ANBU uniform, at the tattoo on his arm, and the fury on his unmasked face, and shrank back.

"A-A-ANBU-san" stammered the woman.

The burned man moaned, gasping for air.

"Our mission was..."

"I don't give a damn what your mission was. It obviously failed. Or are you going to attempt to convince me your mission was to kill and maim a hundred of the good people of Shimabashi?" Genma coughed and pushed his hair back, re-opening the cut on his scalp, which sent a fresh red trickle down his temple. "Move, let me see him." He knelt next to the burned man and repeated what he had done for the little girl.

His findings this time were not so miraculous.

"What's your name?" he asked, ignoring the other two.

"Jotaro," the man whispered.

"I'm sorry, Jotaro, but you are dying. Your spleen is ruptured, and your burns are severe." The words left Genma's mouth like ice.

"No!" he woman leaned in, reaching a hand out to Genma. "We can save him. I'll run for help. We can..."

"You will do _exactly_ as I say," Genma snapped back.

"No, ANBU-san!" It was the man this time, in a voice almost as hoarse as Genma's. "Save him." He held a kodachi in his hand, poised to strike Genma. In the next instant he was on his belly on the floor of the shrine, with a furious ANBU atop him, wrenching his arms up behind his back.

"You _will_ do _exactly_ as I say," Genma repeated. "Your incompetence created this. Your ineptitude. Did you check, even once, before you set that fire, for a gas line? You didn't even protect yourselves."

Jotaro gave a rattling groan, turning stricken eyes towards Genma. His female comrade cradled his head in her lap. Her eyes, too, begged Genma to save them.

Genma let go of his captive, hunching over himself to cough deeply. Blood pounded in his ears. He forced himself to calm. Anger was the enemy of a centered mind, he told himself. A ninja does not give way to anger, but channels its energy into his own. Rule six. One of the first rules they taught at Academy.

"I'll do what I can. But you..." He looked at the woman, at the man. "Give me your names."

"Watanabe Ayako," the woman said.

"Tobitake Shinpei."

"I will do what I can for your comrade," Genma repeated. He knelt next to Jotaro once more, and cast a healing jutsu, directing it at the bleeding in the man's rigid belly and the burns choking his airways with dying cells.

It was hopeless. He wished he had Haruichi's skills. Had Haruichi himself. Maybe if they'd had a real doctor here, one who could perform surgery, there would have been a chance. He felt the life in the injured man failing under his hands. Maybe not even then. Maybe not even the legendary Sannin healer Tsunade could fix this.

Jotaro gurgled. Genma glared at the other two. He would remember those names--Watanabe Ayako, Tobitake Shinpei--when he made his report on this phenomenal little cluster fuck.

"Is he..." the woman started.

"No," Genma shook his head, meeting her eyes. _No, he's not alright. He's not going to even make it home._ He reached down and snapped one of the pair of dogtags from the chain around Jotaro's throat, and held it out her. "Now answer my question."

"We didn't... We didn't have a lot of time, ANBU-san," Shinpei said. "Our orders were to set fire to the restaurant's kitchen. To make it look like an accident. We were delayed getting here by the rain, and we had to use damp fire starters..."

"Excuses," Genma said coldly, "will not bring back the people you killed." He finished his work on Jotaro, injecting him with enough morphine to ease him into unconsciousness, since there was little else he could do. It would be a few hours, perhaps, before he died. "People who were not your targets."

Ayako shook her head, looking down at her lap. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks pale.

"When I've finished with you, I am giving you new orders. You will accept them as field orders from Shiranui Genma, Special Jounin, registration number 010203."

The two chuunin nodded numbly.

"You will go back to the scene of your fire and help the civilians there" he told Shinpei. "And you," he told Ayako, "will carry your injured comrade to Konoha, and report immediately on your failed mission."

It was a harsh sentence. It would take a miracle bigger than any Genma had ever known the gods to grant, for that chuunin to get her comrade--maybe her lover, from the tender way she held his head--to Konoha before he died. But of the three of them, she was the best choice. Shinpei had minor burns, maybe had inhaled smoke. And Genma was too ill and injured to carry a full grown man at full speed. He shut his eyes a moment and groaned.

"Go."

"Are you... you're not coming with us? Are you hurt, ANBU-san?" Ayako asked hesitantly.

"Are you blind?" Genma snapped back, and broke off into harsh, rattling coughs. "Go. He's dying. You _might_ be able to get him to a proper medic before he does. I can't." He glared at Ayako, then at Shinpei. "Go. Get him out of here, and you get the fuck back to that town and try to do some goddanmed good for someone."

When they had gone, he looked up into the stone Buddha's sightless eyes. For a long moment, he thought of nothing at all. Then he thought of the blind woman. Her eerie predictions. _Give life to one who would have died..._ A farce. Jotaro was dying, and nothing Genma had done was more than palliative. The face of the frightened little girl came back to him then, and he shook his head angrily.

How could they have sent such unprepared fools to carry out this mission? Arson in the pre-dawn hours, maybe, in an empty restaurant. That was chuunin's work. But to firebomb a building filled with civilians at the hight of noon?

Another face came to mind. One as fire-scarred as Jitaro's, but healed. Smirking. Raidou. He really wished his friend were here now. It was easy to think how seamlessly the pair of them would have carried out the chuunins' mission. How hard they'd worked and far they'd come, from their chuunin days. Had Raidou ever been as undisciplined as those chuunin? Had _he?_

No, they were cut from different cloth. The words echoed in his head. Had the silent Buddha spoken? Genma laughed dryly to himself. It was probably just fatigue and fever making his thoughts seem loud.

His back ached, his lungs burned, and the scent of smoke still choked him. He looked down at himself, seeing stained black fabric and scorched white armour. Perhaps there was something more to being ANBU than just living long enough to get there.

ooo ooo ooo

Special thanks for various beta reading and encouragement to: Dark, Kaja, JB, Momo, Suz, and everyone at Fallen Leaves

This was written as part of the collaborative writing project Fallen Leaves. Fallen-Leaves . insanejournal . com


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